Need Someone’s Help? Ask the Person Who Just Turned You Down

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The study: Daniel A. Newark and his fellow researchers at Stanford had 19 university students each stop 15 strangers on campus and ask two favors. The first was “Would you fill out a short survey?” and the second, “Would you drop a letter at the post office for me?” The students seeking help had predicted that, by and large, people who refused the initial request would refuse the next one. But in fact, a significant proportion of the people who declined to fill out the survey agreed to the letter drop.

The challenge: Are people who’ve already said no to one thing really more likely than we think to say yes to something else? Mr. Newark, defend your research.

Newark: We did find a significant disconnect between help seekers’ expectations and people’s behavior. The students asking for favors thought that only 18% of the people who said no to the survey would say yes to the second request. Yet 43% of them agreed to mail the letter. And we’ve seen similar results in other experiments involving hundreds of participants. People consistently underestimate the chances of compliance after a previous refusal. They assume that someone who said no once will probably say no again.

The Pessimism of Help Seekers

Subjects in Newark’s study greatly underestimated the percentage of people who would agree to a second request after turning down an initial one.

18% of those potential helpers were expected to say yes

43% actually agreed to help

HBR: Why are we so pessimistic?We tend to overlook the discomfort and guilt others feel when they reject us. When someone won’t do us a favor, we assume it’s because of an ingrained personality trait—the person is just selfish or unhelpful. But often it’s due to situational factors—maybe people want to help out but are just too busy. In reality, they may feel so bad about rejecting us that they become more willing to help should the chance arise again. But we’ve already written them off, so they’re the people we’re least likely to ask. It’s a real missed opportunity.

And we do this with friends and colleagues as well as strangers?Participants in the survey/letter drop study were basically dealing with strangers, though all were members of the same campus community. In related experiments I conducted with Francis J. Flynn and Vanessa K. Bohns, subjects imagined what reactions they’d get when asking favors of everyone from strangers to family members. And, in subsequent research, Francis and I asked people to imagine approaching colleagues for feedback on slides for a presentation or soliciting travel advice or job application help from acquaintances or friends. No matter what the relationship with potential helpers was, the subjects underestimated their willingness to perform a second favor after refusing an initial one.

There’s a big difference between mailing a letter and critiquing a presentation. The magnitude of the favor doesn’t matter, either?With small favors, the overall rate of people saying yes might be higher. But the pattern of underestimating compliance after rejection is the same.

I should note that this research focused on multiple requests of similar size: take a survey, then drop a letter; spend a day helping me move, then let me crash at your place for the weekend. This was a point of differentiation because most previous work has focused on how requests of increasing or decreasing magnitude affect the willingness to help. Studies on the foot-in-the-door technique have shown that if you start small and get an initial yes, your target will tend to keep saying yes to bigger things because he or she doesn’t want to break the pattern of helpfulness. At the same time, research on the door-in-the-face technique suggests that if you start big and get an initial no, and then come back with a smaller request, your target will be more likely to say yes, because it will seem like you’ve made a concession.

So any way you slice it, it pays to be persistent? The squeaky wheel does get the grease?It looks that way. Particularly in places that have individualistic cultures, like the United States, people are sometimes reluctant to admit that they need help and are anxious about asking for it. But our research indicates that they fear rejection more than they should. Most people, even those who have turned you down before, are more willing to lend a hand than you’d think.

The assistance they give may be of much better quality than you’d expect, too. We’ve seen that helpers are willing to devote significantly more time and effort to tasks than the people making the requests predicted. They’re not phoning it in; they’re going the extra mile.

How do you quantify that?In one study we found that people who were asked to complete as much of a 75-question survey as they wished answered 45 questions in six minutes, 28 seconds, with a 90% accuracy rate, on average. But the people giving the survey had projected only 26 questions in four minutes, 22 seconds, with an 80% accuracy rate. In another lab experiment, students who wrote letters of recommendation for fellow study subjects included nearly 50% more positive statements and committed far fewer spelling and grammatical errors than their partners had anticipated.

We ran two additional studies with hypothetical scenarios involving colleagues, acquaintances, and friends and found the same disconnect. Again, it was because the help seekers failed to recognize how uncomfortable people felt about providing poor quality help.

But surely some people do phone it in or repeatedly reject requests for help, without any remorse, right?Yes. Our findings reflect an average tendency. There are, of course, some profoundly unhelpful people out there—but not as many as you might think. The general takeaway here is, Don’t assume the worst. Be slower to judge. Realize that people are busy and that “I can’t help you this time” usually doesn’t mean “I don’t want to help you ever.” If you forget that, you risk cutting yourself off from those who are most likely to give you useful assistance.

What’s the next step in your research?We’re in the midst of studying what help seekers expect when they ask different people the same favor. If you’re initially rejected, do you think there’s something wrong with the request or with you? Or do you think the person you asked is the problem?

We’re also exploring how the help-seeking/helping disconnect plays out in organizations. You can see how a yes or a no from an executive early on might lead to that person’s either being overburdened with requests or hardly ever approached. Also, should managers try to encourage more helping among colleagues? Could it increase efficiency and information sharing? Or do innovation and expertise improve if people have to wrestle with questions on their own for a while?

Will you do me a favor?Unfortunately, I have to get to a meeting.

Will you do me a favor tomorrow?I’d be happy to.

Interview by Alison Beard

Daniel A. Newark is a doctoral candidate in organization studies at Stanford University.

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